Every purchase we make is an investment whether we realize it or not, because buying things is more than just exchanging cash for a service or good. When you purchase anything, it's really an investment in your time, your energy, your health, your family, your fun, and eventually, your life.
This is the kinds of thinking that most people overlook and where all the trouble comes from. When you stop treating spending money for whatever you buy as an investment, then you just start making purchase after purchase without ever considering how much of your future value you are adding or removing in your life by doing so.
This is where we need a change of orientation about buying things. Instead of looking at it as just spending, you need to start thinking of yourself as an investor; not just financially, but across every part of our lives. Your money is only one part of the equation; time, focus, and energy are just as, and in most cases even more, important.
Before you buy anything, you have to realize that we are only ever either investing in or draining value out of ourselves. This is when we must step back and really consider what it is that we are actually investing in because our every decision is either creating something meaningful or depleting something from ourselves without our even knowing it.
Certain parts of our life really need investment; like our health, our personal development, our knowledge, our relationships, and our long-term future, and these are what tend to deliver a huge return over time, but we tend to drastically under-invest in them. We are prone to over-investing in short-term satisfaction; driving things like the latest fad, luxury upgrades we didn't need, or purchases we felt compelled to make to impress others. While they make us feel good, we often do so at the expense of long-term stability.
And when you look at it, what your lifestyle looks like now is just a reflection of the investments you made in the past. This is something that is often not readily obvious because we never considered the full extent of the investments we made. When you break it down, your time is the most valuable thing you possess, but many people just treat it as something that just fills up our days- so what is it you’re actually investing in every day?
This is precisely why we must re-evaluate the balance of investment in our life. Where are we investing our time, money, energy, and focus? Are certain parts of our lives being neglected and do some receive far too much attention? A lack of balance in our investments will always reflect in our outcomes.
The end goal is not necessarily to stop spending money altogether, but to spend it with intention. To know that every decision we make contributes in some way to a larger picture we are creating. When we adopt this mindset we automatically make better choices.
The bottom line is that we are always investing whether we realize it or not, so we must ask ourselves whether we are doing it wisely. Are we building a life today that aligns with the one we want to live tomorrow?
Let every purchase be an investment in your life.